Buena Vista Demons streak Florence Huskies in Tri-Peaks League game

Schell scores 27 as Buena Vista gets T-PL win against Florence

Huskies junior Zach Hoxie goes up for a shot Tuesday against Buena Vista in Florence. Jeff Shane/ Daily Record

Florence -- They got close, but a huge third quarter run was too much to overcome for the Florence Huskies on Tuesday.

Kenneth Schell scored 27 points and the Demons' 15-0 run to start the second half held strong as Buena Vista beat Florence, 51-41, in a Tri-Peaks League game.

Schell scored the first 11 points of the third quarter. It took the Demons 5 minutes to go from down two to up 13.

"We got sloppy -- both sides of the ball," a somber Huskies coach Mark Marquez said after the game. "We gave up a lot of easy shots and missed a lot of open looks ourselves, including layups, some good looking 3s that we usually put down one or two (of). We couldn't hit anything."

Schell said his team really cleaned up its act and started clicking during their big run coming out of halftime.

"We had a big turnover spell in the first (half) with seven, eight turnovers in a row," he said. "We just took control of the ball, took smart shots and they started falling."

Not including the third quarter, the Huskies outscored the Demons 36-34.

The Demons' win creates their only winning streak of the season. The team is now 3-8 overall and 2-3 in the T-PL. Florence fell to 4-7 and 2-3.

More importantly, the Demons now hold the tiebreaker over the Huskies for the fourth spot in the standings, a place both teams seem destined to be fighting for at the end of the season. The fourth seed gets to host a T-PL tourney game, while the fifth seed has to travel to play a team from the East division.

Florence cut the lead to six with about 2 minutes to play but couldn't get over the hump.

Schell's 27 was the only double-digit mark in the scoring column for Buena Vista, but Zakk James had nine. Josh Sisneros' 12 points led Florence, with Ethan Bombardier getting a hard-nosed eight.

Marquez was visibly down after his post-game talk with his team in the locker room.

"We've got some soul searching to do," he said. "We're a better team than this, and they know it."

He said a game against a team that entered 2-8 shouldn't have been close, and that they certainly shouldn't have lost by 10 points.

"It's now up to them to figure out the rest of their season," Marquez said, "because they're a good team.

"Our homestand has been pretty pathetic to say the least. With the exception of one win, we've been pretty off at home this season."

The Huskies went 1-3 on the homestand with the one win a 52-32 blowout of Fountain Valley, a team Marquez said wasn't good. The Danes committed 40 turnovers that game to assist the Huskies.

It's back on the road for four of their next five games. The Huskies' next game will be at 7 p.m. Friday when they travel to play fifth-ranked Colorado Springs Christian School.